Monthly Archives: September 2011

Bee Tales

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We saw the bee hives on the flat roof of the Royal York hotel, just hidden by the new tall buildings on Queens Quay.  They are set in a great herb garden there. It is  immediately to the left of the golden glowing Royal Bank seen last week at sunrise from Algonquin Island as we prepared for the Round The Island windsurf Marathon. (The brightest copper glow on the right side is from the newer Bank of Nova Scotia further up town)

Back in Perrysburg I reluctantly donated one of my few combs for taste testing against 15 other honey samples by 30 members of the local bee club, meeting at 577 Foundation.

You can’t imagine my surprise when it was awarded the very last prize of the night:

Back at the ‘farm’ I put in a one-way gate under the top honey ‘super’ (box). After 2 days it was almost empty of bees so I could take off 30 pounds of honey.

When I took off the next box to check for beetles, etc., and temporarily put it down on edge (so as not to squish them) the bees wandered out of their unfamiliar home,

but I put the board in front of the hive and they all obediently walked back in.

They really are very well behaved and don’t sting me much at all now.

Right now they are out gathering pollen from Golden Rod and Sedum in the last warmth of summer.

Questions

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1. How could the 3000 year old gold sun disk from Guangzho, China, on the left be so similar to the 5000 year old Celtic symbol, on the right, seen on many stone engravings and which I saw many places in the Bay of Biscay, Brittany, France?

 

2.  Skunk Scares Snap Shooters
What would you do? Last week in Niagara on the Lake while Walking back from a delightful perfomance of Shaw’s “Candida” (the liberated lady of 100 years ago), I saw in the dark, in this garden, a skunk approaching – tail up. It would have made a great cell phone photo, but would have needed the flash.  Susan advised against it as we had 2 more plays to see and I only had one set of clothes. I’m told that if you hear a sharp click, it’s too late. Next day I did snap the empty scene, and added a sketch of what I remember:

 

3.  Go Bananas
Why would Dole have this lable on a banana I bought in Victoria barely a month or so after the Stanley Cup hockey riots which trashed the downtown Vancouver streets?

 

Ottawa, Ontario

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The architects have fun along Sussex Drive, even if the locals don’t understand, and can’t explain it to me:

Further along, the oil-rich Saudis & Kuwaitis have their embassies near
a glossy aluminum-spired cathedral

Beautiful walking in the fresh fall air with only a few Monarch butterflies left. I lost all 5 of the ones on my milkweed back home.